The Lausiac History 1 part 2/7

And he, sitting and plaiting palm fronds, blessed me with his voice only, and said:

"May God give you your reward."

And he said to his steward Origen:

"For these monasteries are the more in want";

charging him to give none to those in Egypt, because that country was more prosperous.

"But I," she says, "standing and expecting to be honoured or praised by him for the gift, and hearing nothing from him, said to him:

'That you may know, lord, how much it is—it is three hundred pounds.'

But he, not even looking up at all, answered me:

'He to whom you brought it, my child, has no need of a scale.'

For He who weighs the mountains knows far better the quantity of the silver.

'For if you were giving it to me, you would speak rightly;

but if to God, who did not overlook the two mites, be silent.'"

"Thus," she says, "the Lord dispensed it on my entering into the mountain."

[He died] without fever, not having been ill, but [while] stitching a basket, being seventy years old;

who, having sent for me, while the last stitch was being made for completion, about to expire, said to me:

"for I have nothing else to leave you."

Whom she, having prepared for burial and wrapped his body in linen cloths, laid to rest;

and thus she withdrew from the desert, keeping the basket with her until death.

This Pambo, as he was dying, at the very hour of his departure, is said to have spoken thus to Origen the presbyter and steward and to Ammonius—men of great renown—and to the rest of the brethren standing by: "From the time that I came to this place of the desert and built my cell and dwelt here, I do not remember having eaten bread as a gift apart from my own hands;

I have not repented of a word that I have spoken up to this present hour;

and even so I depart to God as one who has not even begun to be godly."

And Origen and Ammonius, who recounted these things to us, bore him this further witness: that he never, when asked a question about Scripture or any other practical matter, answered offhand, but would say [that he had not yet grasped it];

and often three months would pass and he would give no answer, saying he had not grasped it.

Yet they received his pronouncements, made thus carefully according to God, as though from God.

For this virtue he was said to have possessed even beyond the great Antony and beyond all others—the virtue of exactness in speech.

And such a deed of Pambo is reported: that Pior the ascetic, having visited him, brought his own bread, and being charged by him:

"Why have you done this?" he answered;

for after a time, [Pambo] visiting him, carried bread that he had soaked, and when questioned said:

"That I might not burden you, I even soaked the bread."

Concerning Ammonius. This Ammonius, his disciple, together with three other brothers and two sisters of his own, having pressed on to the height of love for God, took up the desert; and the women made a monastery apart, and he too apart, so as to be a sufficient distance from one another.

And since the man was exceedingly learned, and a certain city desired him for a bishop, they came to the blessed Timothy and entreated him to ordain him their bishop.

[Timothy said:] "Bring him to me and I will ordain him."

So when they went off with reinforcements, and he saw that he was caught, he entreated them and swore an oath not to accept ordination, nor to leave the desert;

Then, while they were looking on, he took a pair of shears and cut off his left ear down to the root, saying to them:

"At least from now on be assured that it is impossible for me, since the law forbids that one with a cut-off ear be brought into the priesthood."

So, leaving him thus, they withdrew, and going off told the bishop.

[The bishop said:] "Let this law be observed among the Jews;

but as for me, even if you bring me a man with his nose cut off, if he be worthy in his ways, I will ordain him."

So going off again, they entreated him;

and he swore to them, saying: "If you compel me, I will cut off my tongue."

So, leaving him thus, they withdrew.

Concerning this Ammonius this wonder is reported: that never, when pleasure rose up against him, did he spare his own flesh, but heating an iron, he would apply it to his own limbs, so that he was always covered with sores.

His table, moreover, consisted of raw food from his youth until death;

for he never ate anything that had passed through fire, except bread.

And he was a comforter to the brethren in the desert, if anyone ever was.

To him the blessed Evagrius, a man Spirit-bearing and discerning, gave his vote, saying: "I have never seen a man more passionless than he."

[He once came to the city of Constantine for some need,

at the martyr-shrine called Rufinianae.

Whose tomb is said to heal all who suffer from chills and shivering.] Concerning Benjamin. On this mountain of Nitria there was a certain man named Benjamin, who, having lived for eighty years and practised asceticism to the highest degree, was counted worthy of the gift of healings, so that everyone on whom he laid his hand, or to whom he gave oil that he had blessed, was delivered from every sickness.

This man, then, who had been counted worthy of such a gift, eight months before his death contracted dropsy, and his body became so swollen as to appear like another Job.

Going to him, then, we beheld so great a swelling of body that one finger of his hand could not encircle [the size of] other fingers.

And not being able to gaze upon the dreadfulness of the affliction, we turned away our eyes.

Then that blessed Benjamin said to us:

"Pray, children, that my inner man may not contract dropsy;

for this [body] neither profited me when it was well, nor harmed me when it suffered."

For those eight months, then, a very broad stool was set for him, on which he sat continually, no longer being able to lie back in a bed because of his other bodily needs.

And being in this affliction, he yet healed others.

I have necessarily described this affliction, lest we be astonished whenever some calamity befalls righteous men.

When he died, the doorposts of the door and the side-posts were taken up, that the body might be able to be carried out of the house.

Concerning Apollonius. A certain man named Apollonius, formerly a merchant, having renounced the world and settled on the mountain of Nitria, since he could neither learn a trade nor pursue the study of Scripture on account of his advanced age, having lived twenty years on the mountain, took up this practice:

out of his own money and his own labours, he would buy all kinds of medicines and provisions in Alexandria, and supplied the whole brotherhood in their sicknesses.

And one might see him from early morning until the ninth hour going round the monasteries, entering door by door to see if anyone lay sick;

and he carried raisins, pomegranates, eggs, and fine wheat-cakes, which the sick require, having found this way of life profitable for him into his old age.

Who, as he was dying, left his wares to one like himself, having entreated him to carry out this ministry.

For with five thousand monks dwelling on the mountain, there was need also of this oversight, because the place was a desert.

Concerning Paesius and Isaiah. Two others called Paesius and Isaiah were brothers, sons of a Spanish trader;

who, when their father died, divided the property they had in real estate—five thousand coins in money, and what was found in clothing and household slaves.

These two took counsel with one another and deliberated among themselves, saying:

"What way of life shall we take up, brother? If we go into the trade which our father followed, we too shall have to leave our labours to others;

and perhaps too we shall fall into the dangers of robbers or of the sea."

The aim of the solitary life, then, pleased them.

But they were found to differ, the one from the other [in their way of life].

For having divided the money, each held to his aim of pleasing God, but with a contrasting manner of life.

For the one, having scattered everything to monasteries and churches and prisons, and having learned a small craft whereby he might procure his bread, gave himself to asceticism and prayer.

But the other, having scattered nothing, but having made himself a monastery and taken in a few brothers, would welcome every stranger, every sick person, every old man, every poor man, setting out three or four tables on the Lord's Day and on the Sabbath;

in this way he used up his money.

And some approved of the one, others of the other.

When, then, contention arose in the brotherhood over the praises, they went to the blessed Pambo and referred the decision to him, asking to learn which was the greater way of life;

for the one had displayed a work like Abraham's, the other like Elijah's.

[They asked:] "By your feet, how is it possible that they should be equal?" And when some preferred the ascetic and said: "He has done a thing according to the Gospel, having sold all and given to the poor, and bearing the cross hour by hour and day by day and night by night, and following the Saviour even in his prayers";

but others contending on the opposite side and saying: "This man showed such great things to those in need, that he even sat in the highways and gathered in the afflicted;

and not only did he give rest to his own soul, but also to many others, by nursing the sick and giving aid";

the blessed Pambo says to them:

"And I assure each one of you that this man, if he had not practised so much asceticism, would not have become worthy to be compared with that one's goodness;

while that one, again, giving rest to the strangers, was himself also given rest along with them; and even if he seemed to bear the burden that comes from toil, yet he had also the rest that comes with it.

But wait, that I too may receive the revelation from God, and afterwards, when you come, you shall learn."

So they came again after some days and entreated him, and he said to them, as in the presence of God:

“I saw the two of them together standing in paradise.”

Concerning Macarius the Younger. A certain young man named Macarius, about eighteen years old, while playing with his companions of the same age beside the lake called Maria, as he was pasturing cattle, committed an involuntary homicide.

And without saying anything to anyone he made his way into the desert, and was driven to such fear, both of God and of men, that he lost all feeling for ordinary things and remained for three years out in the open in the wilderness.

Now that land is rainless—all know this, both those who learned it by report and those who learned it by experience.

This man afterwards built himself a cell;

and having lived another twenty-five years in that cell, he was deemed worthy of the gift of holding demons in contempt, delighting in his solitude.

Having spent much time with him, I asked how his conscience stood with regard to the sin of the homicide;

and he said that he was so far from grief that he even gave thanks for the homicide;

for the involuntary homicide had become for him an occasion of salvation.

And he used to cite testimony from the Scriptures, saying that Moses would not have been counted worthy of the divine vision, of so great a gift, and of writing the holy words, had he not, out of fear of Pharaoh on account of the homicide he committed in Egypt, taken refuge on Mount Sinai.

I say these things not to pave a way to homicide, but to show that there are also virtues born of circumstance, when one does not come to the good of his own free choice;

for of the virtues some are of deliberate choice, and others arise from circumstance.

Concerning Nathanael. There was another of the ancients, named Nathanael.

Him I did not find alive;

for he had fallen asleep fifteen years before my arrival;

but coming upon those who had practiced the ascetic life together with him and had been his contemporaries, I inquired diligently into the man’s virtue;

and they even showed me his cell, in which no one now dwelt, because it lay too near the inhabited world;

for he had built it at a time when anchorites were few.

Among these, having been mocked at the outset by the demon who mocks and deceives all, he was tempted to grow weary of his first cell;

and going off, he built another nearer to a village.

Now after he had finished the cell and taken up residence, three or four months later the demon came by night, holding a whip like the public executioners, and wearing the guise of a ragged soldier, and he made a din with the whip.

To him the blessed Nathanael answered, saying:

“Who are you, doing these things in my lodging?” The demon answered:

“I am the one who drove you out of that other cell;

and so I have come also to drive you into flight from this one.”

So, realizing that he had been mocked, he went back again to his first cell.

And having completed thirty-seven years, he did not pass beyond the door, contending stubbornly with the demon;

and that demon displayed against him so many things, trying to force him to come out, as cannot be told.

Watching for an occasion, the visit of seven holy bishops—whether it came about by God’s providence or from that one’s tempting—all but drove him aground from his purpose.

For when the bishops, after praying, were going out, he did not escort them so much as a foot’s pace.

The deacons said to him:

“You are doing an arrogant thing, abba, in not escorting the bishops.”

“I have died both to my lords the bishops and to the whole world;

for I have a hidden aim, and God knows my heart; therefore I do not escort them.”

So the demon, having failed in this stratagem, took on a shape nine months before his death, and became a child of about ten years old, driving a donkey that carried loaves in a basket.

And, coming late one evening near his cell, it pretended that the donkey had fallen and the child was crying out:

“Abba Nathanael, have mercy on me and give me a hand!”

And he, hearing the voice of the supposed child and slightly opening the door, standing within, spoke to it:

“Who are you, and what do you wish me to do for you?” It said to him:

“I am So-and-so’s lad, and I am carrying loaves; for it is for love of such-and-such a brother, and tomorrow, as the Sabbath dawns, there is need of the offerings;

I beg you, do not overlook me, lest I be devoured by the hyenas.”

For there are many hyenas in those parts.

So the blessed Nathanael, standing dumbfounded, was greatly seized with dizziness, his inward parts troubled, and he reasoned within himself, saying:

“Either I must fall away from the commandment, or from my purpose.”

Later, however, reckoning that it was better not to shake the purpose of so many years, to the shame of the devil, after praying he said to the supposed child who was addressing him:

“I believe in the God whom I serve, that, if you have need, God will send you help, and neither hyenas nor anyone else will harm you;

but if you are a temptation, God will reveal the drama at once, here and now.”

And shutting the door, he went in.

And the demon, put to shame at his defeat, dissolved into a whirlwind and into wild asses leaping and fleeing and letting loose their noises.

This was the contest of the blessed Nathanael, and such was his manner of life, and such his end.

Concerning Macarius the Egyptian.

The deeds concerning the two Macarii, those celebrated men, being many and great and hard to believe, I shrink from both telling and writing, lest I incur the reputation of a liar.

But that the Lord destroys all who speak falsehood the Holy Spirit has declared.

Since therefore I am not lying, O most faithful one, do not disbelieve.

Of these Macarii, the one was an Egyptian by race, the other an Alexandrian, who sold sweetmeats.

And first I shall tell concerning the Egyptian, who lived in all ninety years.

Of these he passed sixty years in the desert, having gone up there as a young man of thirty;

and he was deemed worthy of such great discernment that he was called ‘the old man in the child,’ ‘the youthful elder’;

for at forty years of age he received grace against spirits and for healings and predictions;

and he was also counted worthy of the priesthood.

He had two disciples with him in the inmost desert, the one called Scetis;

of whom the one was a servant near him because of those who came to be healed, and the other was at leisure in a cell very close by.

As time advanced, foreseeing with discerning eye, he said to the one who ministered to him, called John, who afterwards became presbyter in the place of Macarius himself:

“Listen to me, brother John, and bear with my admonition;

for you are being tempted, and the spirit of avarice is tempting you;

and I know that if you bear with me, you will be perfected in this place and be glorified, and no scourge will draw near in your tent;

but if you do not, in the end the very affliction whose passion you are now sick with will come upon you.”

Now it came to pass that he disobeyed, after the falling asleep of Macarius, some fifteen or twenty years later, and so he became a leper, having embezzled what belonged to the poor, such that not a sound spot could be found on his body where one might set a finger.

This, then, is the prophecy of the holy Macarius.

Concerning his food and drink it is superfluous to tell, since not even among the slothful is gluttony or indifference to be found in those parts, both because of the scarcity of supplies and because of the zeal of the inhabitants.

But concerning the rest of his asceticism I will speak;

for it was said that he was unceasingly rapt out of himself, and spent far more time in communion with God than with the things under heaven.

And of him such wonders as these are reported.

A certain Egyptian man, smitten with desire for a free married woman, and unable to allure her, consulted a sorcerer, saying:

“Either make her love me, or work something so that her husband casts her out.”

And the sorcerer, having received a sufficient fee, used his sorcerous tricks, and contrived to make her appear as a mare.

So the husband, coming in from outside and beholding her, was astonished that a mare was lying on his bed.

He calls upon the presbyters of the village;

for three days she partook neither of fodder as a mare, nor of bread as a human being, being deprived of both sorts of food.

At last, so that God might be glorified and the virtue of the holy Macarius be made manifest, it came into the heart of her husband to lead her into the desert;

and putting a halter on her as on a horse, he so led her into the desert.

Now as they drew near, the brethren were standing close by the cell of Macarius, quarreling with her husband and saying:

“Why have you brought this mare here?” He said to them:

“Why, what ails her?” The man answered them: “She was my wife, and she was turned into a horse, and today is the third day that she has tasted nothing.”

They report this to the holy one, who was praying within;

for God had revealed it to him, and he was praying for her.

So the holy Macarius answered the brethren and said to them:

“You are horses, you who have the eyes of horses.

For she is a woman, and has not been transformed at all, except only in the eyes of those who have been deceived.”

And blessing water and pouring it over her bare body from the crown of her head, he prayed;

and immediately he made her appear a woman to all.

“Never absent yourself from the church, never abstain from the communion;

for this befell you because for five weeks you did not draw near to the mysteries.”

Another act of his asceticism:

over a long time he dug a tunnel under the ground from his cell, and finished a cave at its far end, half a stadion away.

And whenever too many people troubled him, he would go out secretly from his cell and depart into the cave, and no one could find him.

Concerning this man a report went out that he raised a dead man, in order to persuade a heretic who would not confess that there is a resurrection of bodies.

And this report prevailed in the desert.

To him there was once brought a demon-possessed young man by his own mother, who was lamenting, and he was bound by two young men.

And the demon had this manner of working:

after he had eaten three modii-measures of bread and drunk a Cilician jar of water, belching it into vapor he would dissolve the food;

for thus the things eaten and drunk were consumed in him as if by fire.

For there is indeed an order of demons called ‘the fiery.’

This young man, then, when not provided for by his own mother, would eat his own dung;

and often he even drank his own urine.

[When his mother brought him to] the holy one, he took him and prayed for him, beseeching God.

And after one or two days, when the affliction had abated, the holy Macarius said to her:

“How much do you wish that he should eat?” And she answered, saying [a large amount].

So, rebuking her that it was too much, in seven days, having prayed for him with fasting, he set him at three pounds, since he ought also to work;

and thus, having healed him, he gave him back to his mother.

And this wonder God wrought through Macarius.

Him I did not myself meet;

for a year before my entry into the desert he had fallen asleep.

Concerning Macarius the Alexandrian. The other Macarius I did meet, the Alexandrian, who was presbyter of the place called the Cells.

In which Cells I myself dwelt for nine years;

during which he survived for my three years;

and some things I saw myself, others I heard from him, and others I learned from others as well.

His asceticism, then, was this:

whatever he ever heard of, that he altogether accomplished.

For having heard from certain men that the Tabennesiotes eat uncooked food throughout all of Lent, he resolved for seven years not to eat anything that had passed through fire, and apart from raw vegetables—if such were ever to be had—and soaked pulses, he tasted nothing.

Having accomplished this virtue, he heard again about another man, that he ate a pound of bread;

and breaking up his own biscuit and cramming it into a narrow-necked jar, he resolved to eat as much as the hand could bring up.

And, as he told it jestingly: “I used to grasp at more of the fragments, but I could not bring them all out because of the narrowness of the opening;

for, like a tax-collector, it would not let me through.”

For three years, then, he held to this discipline, eating four or five ounces of bread and drinking a like amount of water, and one xestes of oil for the year.

He resolved to get the better of sleep, and he told that he did not go under a roof for twenty days, in order to conquer sleep, being scorched by the heat by day and pinched by the cold at night.

And as he said: “Had I not quickly gone under a roof and made use of sleep, my brain would have so dried up that it would have driven me thenceforth into derangement.

And insofar as it lay with me, I conquered;

but insofar as it lay with nature, which has need of sleep, I yielded.”

Once, as he was sitting early in the morning in his cell, a gnat alighted on his foot and stung him;

and feeling the pain, he crushed it with his hand after it had had its fill of blood.

So condemning himself as one who had avenged himself, he sentenced himself to sit naked for six months in the marsh of Scetis, which is in the utter wilderness, where the gnats and the hides of wild boars wound men like wasps.

Thus, then, he was so thoroughly stung all over and threw off such pieces of flesh, that some supposed he had become a leper.

So when he came back after six months into his cell, he was recognized from his voice that it was indeed Macarius.

This man once desired to enter the garden-tomb of Jannes and Jambres, as he himself related to us.

Now this garden-tomb had been made by the magicians of that time who shared power with Pharaoh.

Inasmuch, then, as they had held this power for a long time, they built the work with four-square stones, and made their sepulchre there, and laid up much gold;

and they also planted trees, for the place is moist, in which they also dug a well.

Since, then, the holy one did not know the way, but followed the stars by a kind of reckoning, traversing the desert as if upon the open sea, taking a bundle of reeds he set one upright at each mile as a marker, so that he might find the way on his return.

Now the demon, who ever works against the athletes of Christ, gathering up all the reeds, while he was sleeping about a mile away from the garden-tomb, laid them by his head.

So rising up he found the reeds—perhaps this too God permitting, for his greater training, that he might not trust in reeds, but in the pillar of cloud that guided Israel for forty years in the wilderness.

[As he approached, there appeared] crows against his face, saying:

“What do you want, Macarius? What do you want, monk? Why have you come to our place? You cannot stay here.”

“So I said to them,” he says, “‘I will only go in and look and depart.’”

“So going in,” he says, “I found a bronze bucket hanging and an iron chain over the well, by now consumed by time, and the fruit of the pomegranates within having nothing in it, dried up by the sun.”

Thus, then, turning back, he came home in twenty days.

And when the water that he carried had given out, along with the loaves, he fell into great straits.

And as he was nearly at the point of collapse, there appeared to him—as he related—a certain maiden, wearing a clean linen garment and holding a flask dripping with water;

whom he said was far off from him, about a stadion away, and that for three days he journeyed, seeing her with the flask as if standing still, yet unable to overtake her, as in dreams, but holding out in the hope of drinking he kept up his strength.

After her there appeared a herd of buffalo-cows, of which one stood having a calf;

for there are many in those parts;

and, as he said, her udder was flowing with milk.

So creeping underneath and suckling, he was satisfied.

And the buffalo-cow came even up to his cell, suckling him, but not receiving her own calf.

On another occasion, again, while digging a well near some sprouting brushwood, he was bitten by an asp;

and the creature is deadly;

so taking it with his two hands and gripping it by the jaws, he tore it asunder, saying to it:

“Since God did not send you, how did you dare to come?” Now he had various cells in the desert;

one in the inner utter wilderness of Scetis, and one in Libya, and one in the place called the Cells, and one in the mountain of Nitria.

Of these some were windowless, in which it was said he sat during Lent in darkness;

another was narrower, in which he could not stretch out his feet;

and another was more spacious, in which he received those who frequented him.

This man healed so great a multitude of demoniacs that they could not be reckoned by number.

While we were there, a virgin of noble birth was brought from Thessalonica, who had been paralyzed for many years.

Her, over twenty days, anointing her with holy oil with his own hands and praying, he sent away healthy to her own city.

And she, on departing, sent him a great gift of fruits (alms).

This man, having heard that the Tabennesiotes have a great rule of life, disguised himself and, taking the worldly garb of a laborer, after fifteen days’ journey through the desert went up into the Thebaid.

And coming to the monastery of the Tabennesiotes, he sought out their archimandrite, Pachomius by name, a man most approved and having the gift of prophecy;

from whom the matters concerning Macarius were hidden.

So meeting with him, Pachomius said:

“You have at last advanced into old age, and you cannot practice the ascetic life;

the brethren are ascetics, and you cannot endure their labors;

and you will be scandalized and will go out speaking ill of them.”

And he did not receive him, neither the first day nor the second, for up to seven days.

But when he had persevered, remaining fasting, at last he said to him: [“Enter.”]

He persuades the brethren to receive him;

and the constitution of the one monastery is one thousand four hundred men, down to this day.

And when a little time had passed, Lent came on, and he saw each one practicing different ways of life;

one eating in the evening, another every two days, another every five;

and yet another standing all night long, and sitting by day.

So having soaked palm-fronds in quantity, he stood in one corner, and until the forty days were fulfilled and Easter (Pascha) had come, he touched neither bread nor water;

he bent no knee, he lay not down;

except for a few cabbage leaves he took nothing, and that only on the Lord’s Day, so that he might seem to be eating.